1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a method and system of product development process for chemical compositions using high volume modeling.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of a combinatorial approach for materials synthesis is a relatively new area of research aimed at using rapid synthesis and screening methods to build libraries of polymeric, inorganic or solid state materials. For example, advances in reactor technology have empowered chemists and engineers to rapidly produce large libraries of discrete organic molecules in the pursuit of new drug discovery, which have led to the development of a growing branch of research called combinatorial chemistry. Combinatorial chemistry generally refers to methods and materials for creating collections of diverse materials or compounds—commonly known as libraries—and to techniques and instruments for evaluating or screening libraries for desirable properties.
Presently, research in the lubricant industry involves individually forming candidate lubricating oil compositions and then performing a macro-scale analysis of the candidate compositions by employing a large amount of the candidate to be tested. Additionally, the methods employed for testing each candidate composition require manual operation. This, in turn, significantly reduces the number of compositions that can be tested and identified as leading lubricating oil compositions.
Drawbacks associated with conventional screening procedures can be seen as follows. For example, governmental and automotive industry pressure towards reducing the phosphorous and sulfur content of lubricating oil compositions is leading to new research to identify oil compositions which can satisfy certain tests such as, for example, oxidation, wear and compatibility tests, while containing low levels of phosphorous and sulfur. For instance, United States Military Standards MIL-L-46152E and the ILSAC Standards defined by the Japanese and United States Automobile Industry Association at present require the phosphorous content of engine oils to be at or below 0.10 wt. % with future phosphorous content being proposed to even lower levels, e.g., 0.08 wt. % by January, 2004 and below 0.05 wt. % by January, 2006. Also, at present, there is no industry standard requirement for sulfur content in engine oils, but it has been proposed that the sulfur content be below 0.2 wt. % by January, 2006. Thus, it would be desirable to decrease the amount of phosphorous and sulfur in lubricating oils still further, thereby meeting future industry standard proposed phosphorous and sulfur contents in the engine oil while still retaining the oxidation or corrosion inhibiting properties and antiwear properties of the higher phosphorous and sulfur content engine oils.
Typically, once a group of lubricating oil compositions selected to address a certain requirement, for example the amount of phosphorous and sulfur, has been prepared, no additional tests related to numerous properties of the oil compositions of the selected group, are performed. As a consequence, oftentimes testing additional properties of the selected group of oil compositions, which include, for example, the properties tested during a variety of wear tests, comes as an afterthought. Yet, ensuring proper antiwear properties of lubricating oil compositions are critical to successful operation and maintenance of mechanical systems, such as automobile engines. Laboratory lubricant analysis is time consuming and costly. Furthermore, the laboratories are typically not sufficiently automated, which leads to performing the same lengthy procedure every time a new lubricating oil composition is being tested.
Thus, present research in the lubricant industry does not allow for diverse and rapid testing of lubricating oil compositions. As such, there exists a need in the art for a more efficient, economical and systematic approach for the bench testing of lubricating oil compositions and screening of such compositions for information potentially bearing upon the actual useful properties of the compositions.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to rapidly screen a plurality of sample candidate lubricating oil compositions utilizing small amounts to automatically determine and catalog the desired lubricating properties. In this manner, a method and system of product development process for chemical compositions using high volume modeling can be achieved.